The lovely Farrah Fawcett, who was voted “Best Looking” in her high school class, had no idea back then, that she would be later posing for the most popular pin up gal poster in history.

Fawcett was a huge sensation in the early 70’s with her golden tresses and pearly whites and wholesome girl-next-door beauty, and before her acting career took off, she made a name for herself starring in TV commercials. Like the sexy one of her and Joe Namath for Noxema cream and also her famous Ulta Brite TV commercials, just to name a very few. 
Faberge, even came out with Farrah Fawcett Shampoo commercial. This commercial featured her HUGE hair, which became all the rage in the 1970’s and was simply known as “The Farrah”.

It wasn’t long until Farrah’s iconic beauty launched her into major stardom with a very sexy, but tastefully done poster of her in a bathing suit with a Indian blanket backdrop. This poster hung on many teen boys’ and college dorm walls world wide and still remains as the most remembered photo of Farrah today and also the top selling “pin up” poster of all time, beating out Betty Grable and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. 

Charlie's Angels Then

Still Gorgeous Years Later

Farrah’s next big shot of stardom, was in 1976, when she landed a part in Aaron Spellings “Charlie’s Angels” as Jill Munroe along with Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson.  Charlie’s Angels action figures were also made and were on every little girl’s Christmas list.

Farrah only shot one season with the Angels (she was unhappy with her $10,000 per episode) and was replaced by Cheryl Ladd. But within that short time, Farrah already had oodles of fans. The show had quite an impact its popularity continues today spawning the lucrative remake of a Charlie’s Angels big screen action flick starring Drew Barrymore, Lucy Lui and Cameron Diaz.

Today, there are many websites dedicated to the Angels from Charlies Angels Forever to Jack Condon’s website who is the holder of the Guinness World Record for the biggest Charlie’s Angel memorabilia collection world wide.

Farrah also graced the cover of Playboy back in 1978, with wearing nothing more, than a white buttoned down shirt. Throughout her acting career, Fawcett won three Emmys and one was for her outstanding break out performance in “The Burning Bed,” the first movie to ever feature a live 800 hot line for abused women.

Her first marriage was to fellow 70’s star, Lee Majors who played the Six Million Dollar man, and that union lasted from 1973 to 1982. Farrah then went on to a VERY rocky 27 year on again/off again relationship with actor Ryan O’Neal that ended in 1997, only to be revisited later. O’Neal is best remembered for his Academy-nominated performance in the heart-wrenching film, “Love Story” and for playing opposite his young daughter Tatum, who won a Best Supporting Oscar in the film.

Though Farrah and O’Neal never married, they did have one child together, son Redmond. Unfortunately, both O’Neal and Fawcett have made tabloid news in the last few years because of Redmond repeated legal troubles stemming from a serious drug addiction, something which seems to have plagued virtually ALL of O’neal’s kids.

For the sake of Farrah, I won’t get into the abusive escapades of O’Neal’s temper, and his other two children, actress Tatum O’Neal and brother Griffith, from his former wife. That’s a whole other tawdry and sordid tale.

Despite a hiatus in their relationship, Farrah rushed to O’Neal’s side when he was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001 and nursed her old flame back to health. The two rekindled at that point, and as the story goes, Farrah simply showed up on his doorstep and wanted to lend support and a helping hand. I think that in itself, showed the class this women has.

Farrah went on to do “Chasing Farrah” a TV Land reality show that aired in March 2005. It followed Farrah in her every day life. The show was only 7 episodes long. During this time it was rumored that O’Neal and Farrah married on one of the episodes, this however was a RUMOR.

In 2006, to the delight of many fans, Farrah was reunited with her Charlie’s Angels co-stars for the Prime Time Emmy Awards, where they paid tribute to the late series creator, Aaron Spelling. Fans of the show were delighted to see the three reunited once again.

Son Redmond, Dad O'Neal and Mom Farrah 2003

Sadly, not all of Farrah’s life has been charmed, besides dealing with her sister’s death from lung cancer in 2001, O’Neal’s cancer and her son’s drug addiction, the blonde beauty also lost her agent and her Mom in 2005. Then the final blow came in 2006 when Fawcett was diagnosed with intestinal cancer.
 
Farrah heroically battled the disease emerging elated and hopeful, on her 60th birthday when she was told that she was cancer free and in total remission. The respite from tragedy was brief because three months later her health took a turn for the worse.

In 2007, it was reported Farrah was seeking holistic treatments for the disease in Germany, as the cancer had returned with a vengeance as rectal cancer. She had her journey filmed and chronicled, as she wanted the world to see her struggle in her terms, and her way, which will air in a two-hour NBC TV special.

News in the past month has stated her cancer has now metastasized into her liver. Family members have stated the star is battling for her life and down to a mere 86 pounds. And those famous locks she’s so well known for? Gone.

Her family is now gathering around her to try and comfort Farrah the best they can including her 91-year old father flew in from her home state of Texas to be by his daughter’s side. 

In an interview with People O’ Neal stated”

“It’s a love story. I just don’t know how to play this one. I won’t know this world without her,” O’Neal, 68, says of his current role as caretaker. “Cancer is an insidious enemy.

Fawcett now spends her days at home, often asleep. “She stays in bed,” says O’Neal. “It’s a nice bed.” She receives visits from a few close friends – including fellow Charlie’s Angels stars Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson and, when able, likes to watch TV, especially Dominick Dunne’s cable program Power, Privilege and Justice.

Another visitor has been Fawcett and O’Neal’s son Redmond, who, behind bars for a drug-related probation violation, on April 25 was allowed three hours at home with his mother to say what might be his final goodbye. In his jail-issued jumpsuit and in shackles, Redmond is seen in the NBC documentary climbing into his sleeping mother’s bed and crying. “Oh my gosh, my gosh,” he says as he hugs the frail figure next to him. “Oh, my gosh.”

“Farrah doesn’t know Redmond’s in trouble,” says O’Neal. “And Redmond is terrified for his mother. ‘I don’t want to be in jail and have some guard tell me she is gone,’ he said to me. I told him, ‘She’s rebounding.’ I lied to him. I lie to her. It’s the best thing.” Redmond, meanwhile, is awaiting transfer to a lockdown rehab facility.

A particularly cruel aspect of the disease is that Fawcett has now lost her iconic golden tresses. “The hair is gone,” says O’Neal. “Her famous hair. I have it at home. She didn’t care. I rub her head. It’s kind of fun, actually, this great, tiny little head. How she carried all that hair I’ll never know. She doesn’t have a vanity about it.”

For now, O’Neal struggles to keep hope alive and to avoid facing the future without the love of his life. “I can’t hear a song, I can’t pass places that we were together, without being stabbed in the heart,” he says. “A week ago Farrah said to me, ‘Am I going to make it?’ I said, ‘Yes, you’ll make it. And if you don’t, I’ll go with you.’

“Farrah has never, ever talked about how unfair it is,” concludes O’Neal. “But I’ve thought about it. She may have thought to herself that she had been chosen to do this, that some higher power had put her in this situation. Because then there would be something positive to come out of it. And maybe that’s true. But I’m just not so sure it’s something positive for Farrah.”

 
What really makes Fawcett’s story so sad is how cruelly and unfairly the ailing star has been exploited by the National Enquirer via leaks from UCLA Health System employee, Lawanda Jackson. Jackson who was identified as the person who’d been feeding information about Fawcett’s condition to the tabloid, ironically died of cancer just weeks before she was to stand trial on felony charges stemming from selling information she obtained from spying on Fawcett’s private medical records. Somewhere in this is a lesson on karma being a bitch.

Oh, we can’t let UCLA off the hook. Beyond what Farrah had already gone through personally and publicly due to their own negligence, the hospital had the gall to repeatedly ask Farrah for donations. They told her they set up a foundation in her name, which was to be called the Division of Digestive Diseases Foundation.  

Here’s a report from the LA Times on this horrific story:

As time went on and more stories appeared, Fawcett said she grew convinced that information about her medical condition was being leaked by someone at UCLA. Whenever she sought treatment there, word always got out. Even when the tabloid reports were false, she said, they were based on a morsel of truth.

When she went in for an eye exam, for instance, “they had to say I was going blind.” When she had a pap smear, “they had to say that the cancer had spread; I was having a hysterectomy.

“I actually kept saying for months and months and months, ‘This is coming from [UCLA],” Fawcett said. “I was never more sure of anything in my life.”

Jackson pleaded guilty in December to a felony charge of violating federal medical privacy laws for commercial purposes but died in March of cancer before she could be sentenced. Prosecutors alleged that beginning in 2006, the Enquirer gave her checks totaling at least $4,600 in her husband’s name.

Fawcett said she realized that she needed to prove her theory. So when she found out that her cancer had returned in May 2007, she deliberately withheld the news from nearly all of her relatives and friends.

“I set it up with the doctor,” she said. “I said, ‘OK, you know and I know.’ . . . I knew that if it came out, it was coming from UCLA.”
Within days of her diagnosis, the news was in the Enquirer. “I couldn’t believe how fast it came out,” Fawcett said. “Maybe four days.”

UCLA began an investigation and quickly found that one employee had accessed her records more often than her own doctors. Fawcett said she asked for the employee’s name, but the senior UCLA official in charge of patient privacy refused, saying, “We have a responsibility to protect our employees.”

“And I said, ‘More than your patients?’ . . .” Fawcett recalled.
At the same time, Fawcett said, UCLA repeatedly asked her to donate money to the hospital for a foundation to be set up in her name.

The university went so far as to give her a prewritten letter that she could sign and fill in a dollar amount for the foundation, documents show. It also created an official-looking proposed announcement that said, “Ms. Farrah Fawcett has established a fund in the Division of Digestive Diseases with the expansive goal of facilitating prevention and diagnosis in gastrointestinal cancers.”

“They’re acting like nothing happened,” Fawcett said with a laugh. “It’s like, ‘This will make it all OK.’ I felt that all of a sudden, they were trying awfully hard to push it. Too pushy. In other words, it made me suspicious.”

After months of requests, UCLA ultimately provided Fawcett’s lawyers with the name of the administrative specialist who had gone through her records. In July 2007, as the hospital moved to fire the worker, Lawanda Jackson, she quit. Federal prosecutors tracked the leaks to Jackson as well.

Fawcett said she decided to speak up about the ordeal because she wants to see the Enquirer charged criminally for inducing UCLA workers to invade her records. “They obviously know it’s like buying stolen goods,” she said. “They’ve committed a crime. They’ve paid her money.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said its investigation was ongoing.

Cameron Stracher, senior media counsel for American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company, declined to discuss the investigation but issued the following statement: “The National Enquirer respects Ms. Fawcett and her brave battle with cancer, and acknowledges, as she has, that her public discussion of her illness has provided a valuable and important forum for awareness about the disease.”

In part as a result of Fawcett’s experience, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law tougher penalties for institutions and individuals that violate patients’ privacy. California health inspectors concluded that, all told, Jackson looked at the records of 939 patients “without any legitimate reason” from April 2003 to May 2007.

Even as her illness progressed, Fawcett was followed by paparazzi, including when she traveled to Germany for treatments. When she returned to LAX in March, after her most recent trip to Germany, photographers snapped pictures as she was taken to her car in a wheelchair.

“I’m a private person,” she said in the interview. “I’m shy about people knowing things. And I’m really shy about my medical [care]. It would be good if I could just go and heal and then when I decided to go out, it would be OK.

“It seems that there are areas that should be off-limits.

The interview was conducted in August on condition The Times delay publication until it received permission from Fawcett or Craig Nevius, an executive producer of the upcoming documentary “Farrah’s Story,” which chronicles Fawcett’s struggle to recover and maintain her privacy. “There will be a good time, and what I have to say then will be more important,” she said at the time.

On April 29, Nevius gave written permission for the interview to be published within five days of the documentary’s broadcast date. The documentary is scheduled for broadcast on NBC on Friday. The Times’ interview with Fawcett was videotaped for possible inclusion in the documentary.

Fawcett’s condition has deteriorated since the interview — the cancer has spread to her liver — and she is now bedridden and has lost her hair, her longtime companion Ryan O’Neal told People magazine on May 4. Her treatment has essentially stopped, he said.

“I’m holding onto the hope that there is some reason that I got cancer and there is something — that may not be very clear to me right now — but that I will do,” she said.

I was shocked when I read how ruthless and callous Jackson, the Enquirer and the UCLA Health System were to Farrah, most
especially at a time when she is fighting to survive.

This Friday, May 15th, NBC is airing a two-hour special on Farrah.

Farrah’s Story: 

“Farrah Fawcett’s battle with cancer is chronicled. Farrah narrates, using video from her own video camera as she receives treatments in the U.S. and Germany and fights to protect her privacy from paparazzi and tabloids.”

We wish Farrah a painless, graceful and dignified exit from this sometimes very cruel world, and we wish her family and friends peace.

Source: Queen